Spring Fever

You have been the teacher
unwilling to release me as you
follow broken stone pathways
into your garden filled with flowers
whose precise and common names
you love to pour off your educated tongue,
like larkspur, honeysuckle, iris.
Today a stormy wind blew open
your peeling picket gate
and I crossed open fields
mossy unkempt knolls,
dug bare toes into rich foliage beneath the forest firs,
knelt down before a small wild orchid
the petite purple slipper hanging head down
a harbinger of transformation
beckoning my Cinderella finger
to lift it tenderly
to the light.